Product Description

'Read! Your Lord is the Most Bountiful one who taught by the pen, who taught man what he did not know.' The Qur'an, believed by Muslims to be the word of God, was revealed to the Prophet Muhammad 1400 years ago. It is the supreme authority in Islam and the living source of all Islamic teaching; it is a sacred text and a book of guidance, that sets out the creed, rituals, ethics, and laws of the Islamic religion. It has been one of the most influential books in the history of literature. Recognized as the greatest literary masterpiece in Arabic, it has nevertheless remained difficult to understand in its English translations. This new translation is written in a contemporary idiom that remains faithful to the original, making it easy to read while retaining its powers of eloquence. Archaisms and cryptic language are avoided, and the Arabic meaning preserved by respecting the context of the discourse. The message of the Qur'an was directly addressed to all people regardless of class, gender, or age, and this translation is equally accessible to everyone.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #94497 in Books
• Published on: 2005-05-12
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 502 pages

Tim Winter, Times Literary Supplement
"Haleem knows the text by heart. His intimacy with it shows in the brevity and intuitive intelligence of his solutions."

Review
Haleem knows the text by heart. His intimacy with it shows in the brevity and intuitive intelligence of his solutions. (Tim Winter, Times Literary Supplement )

Synopsis
'Read! Your Lord is the Most Bountiful one who taught by the pen, who taught man what he did not know.' The Qur'an, believed by Muslims to be the word of God, was revealed to the Prophet Muhammad 1400 years ago. It is the supreme authority in Islam and the living source of all Islamic teaching; it is a sacred text and a book of guidance, that sets out the creed, rituals, ethics, and laws of the Islamic religion. It has been one of the most influential books in the history of literature. Recognized as the greatest literary masterpiece in Arabic, it has nevertheless remained difficult to understand in its English translations. This new translation is written in a contemporary idiom that remains faithful to the original, making it easy to read while retaining its powers of eloquence. Archaisms and cryptic language are avoided, and the Arabic meaning preserved by respecting the context of the discourse. The message of the Qur'an was directly addressed to all people regardless of class, gender, or age, and this translation is equally accessible to everyone.

Customer Reviews

Use it together with Arberry's translation
The Quran is both a sacred text and a supreme work of Arabic poetry. This puts the translator in a dilemma: To convey the religious teaching, the text needs to be rendered into modern prose, which loses the poetry. To convey the poetry, one must render the text as a poem in modern language, which then tends to obscure the religious teaching. Neither approach can fully translate the original.

Abdel Haleem's translation is a masterful rendition into modern English prose. For rendition as modern English poetry, Arberry's translation for OUP is arguably the best. If you want to understand the Quran in English, your best bet IMO is to use Abdel Haleem AND Arberry.

Revolutionary translation, very clear, straightforward and understandable
The Qur'an (Oxford World's Classics) by M.A. Abdel Haleem (translator) is simply the best version of the Qur'an available to the English speaking world today.

It uses modern English and does not attempt to copy the old English of the King James bible (which most English translations of the Qur'an attempt to copy). Furthermore, the translator (Abdel Haleem) understands that the sentence structure of Arabic and English is different and translating the text word for word will make it incomprehensible, an example would be the Arabic verse "Jannatun tajri min tahtiha al-anhaar", which if translated word for word into English would look something like this "Gardens under which rivers flow" which (once translated into English) gives the impression that the rivers are flowing underground. However in Arabic it simply means "Gardens graced with flowing rivers", even though it says "tahtiha", which literally means "under it", however because of the certain sentence structure of Arabic it simply means "Gardens graced with flowing rivers", the translator realised this and did not fall for this trap.

This translation also has the verses following in succession which preserves the smooth flow of the Arabic and does not have the verses one under the other which breaks up the flow. Morever the footnotes are only there when necessary and when the text becomes unclear to people who do not know the historical context of the verse and/or the meaning, the footnotes are also informative and will be useful for intellectuals and/or people who want to study the Quran, not just read it. The font is also perfect, not too big, not too small.

Overall a pleasure to read. This stays true to the original Arabic (even though it can in no way be as beautiful or as powerful as the Arabic Qur'an, which is divine) and is a must have for anybody interested in understanding the very pinnacle of Islam, the Qur'an and/or for anybody who is a Muslim but is put off by the other unclear and over explained other translations.

Easy to read and understand
This was the 2nd copy of a English translation of the Quran and I found it really easy to read and understand. I found other transslations of the Quran hard to understand as they were written in old English but this one is written in moden English so easyer for me to read and understand.